Prevalence of sensorineural hearing loss among type-II diabetes mellitus patients attending KLES Dr. Prabhakar Kore Hospital and MRC: A cross-sectional study

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is an important healthcare concern in the modern world. This disease and its complications can affect virtually every system in the human body. A possible complication of DM is sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). AIM: The current study aimed to evaluate the prevalence of SNHL among the patients of type-2 DM attending the hospital as well as to correlate the severity of hearing loss to the duration of diabetes and the glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels. A total of 125 known cases of type-2 DM were included in the study. METHODOLOGY: For each patient, a detailed history was taken, thorough clinical ear, nose, and throat examination was done, hearing thresholds were evaluated by means of pure tone audiometry and HbA1c levels were measured. RESULTS: SNHL was seen in 76.8% of the patients. Robust correlation was seen between the severity of SNHL and the duration of DM (P CONCLUSION: This study confirms that there is a high prevalence of SNHL in type-2 DM.